Everything Glennon Doyle did wrong

I know exactly why the author got hounded off SubStack last week. And it was all her fault (just like it was MY fault, when I got hounded online).

Glennon Doyle - philanthropist, best-selling author and activist - left SubStack last week following a brief (10 or thereabouts weeks) stint on the platform. She closed her account with an apologetic last post, explaining opaquely that she didn't feel safe here.

I’ll be honest: I missed her joining in the first place. This, despite the 49 year old American author and podcaster, who has written and spoken about everything from raising her children as a progressive Christian, to her addiction issues and bulimia, and whose 2020 culture-altering smash-hit Untamed detailed (along other things) her leaving her husband for another woman, arriving on SubStack with immense fanfare. She hit the ground running, loudly and proudly, with a splurge of considered and cultivated content, posts, videos, a paywall.

That was the first thing people got cross about. Doyle should be more humble, less TA DAAAAAAA! , they felt, she should loiter on the sidelines and Watch and Learn from them, people who’d been on the platform for longer, quietly honing their Craft, their Voice.

The second thing people got cross about, was how many other people were delighted Doyle had started up, and so instantly subscribed.

IE:

“She had,” SubStacked one person whom we can assume was not particularly pro-Glennon, camp-wise, “after only eight fucking weeks (and I use the curse word here purposefully) 217K subscribers. You heard me right. Let me repeat that. Eight weeks. TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN FUCKING THOUSAND SUBSCRIBERS.”

Because being very successful is very bad.

I mean, it’s also precisely what all those beavering away, honing their Craft and their Voice yearn for, with every fibre of their being! Recognition. Approval. $$$! To be Seen! Plucked out of the masses of all other Craft- and Voice-honers, told THEY ARE THE ONE! To show everyone who ever doubted them, rejected them, flicked them aside, laughed at their dreams, every agent who didn’t get back to them, every publisher who slush-piled them, every parent who told them to get a proper job THAT THEY WERE WRONG! LOOK AT ME NOW, BITCHES!

But, you know. When other people are successful? Especially other women?

Then?

Successful = BAD. Successful = taking something away from other women.

As far as I can tell, it went on from there. Doyle got more subscribers, but also, more and more hate and criticism on account of it; at some point, the volume of hatred and criticism tipped into a state of being untenable, and she decided to Do One. So it was that, on April 30th, Doyle closed her account, vacated the premises.

And that was when I started hearing about it.

The first thing I read was one woman suggesting that, given “Glennon” had received such a vast volume of criticism, she should maybe stop calling it “bullying” - and start to considering it’s merit. Because how could so many people be wrong? Eh?

When I saw this, I felt a kick in my deepest gut, the emotional vertigo-type nausea which accompanies an old trauma being instantaneously reactivated.

Cos people have said that sort of thing about me. Piled in on me, on-line - often, but most painfully, in response to my first book - after which, a load more had piled in, all entirely confident I was The Bad One because: how could so many people simultaneously sh*tting on one other person, possibly be wrong? I go into it - what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that sort of attention, how profoundly damaging it is - in depth in this post , but, in brief: it feels like the very worst days at school. When everyone simultaneously turns against you, spreads rumours about you, whispers about how you smell, how ugly you are. When they react to your presence with physical disgust, when even the most loyal among your mates can no longer bare to be seen with you, when desolate loneliness overwhelms you like a vast wave - and all the time: you have no real idea what it is you’ve done. That’s how it begins. It’s legacy is soul-leeching shame; a shame so encompassing that - in my case at least - it took around a year to recover (and another decade, for me to dare publish another book).

Yet:

“ Something clearly was felt by many women…” said another woman, about Doyle. Oh right. If SOMETHING was felt BY MANY WOMEN, it must be just, righteous and true.

That was how I first encountered this - situation.

Then I kind of forgot about it - life, you know - until, scrolling through SubStack’s Notes function, I saw another message, from another woman, about how if “Glennon” (do note the repeated and contemptuous use of her first name, a double injury because such assumed familiarity should only be associated with fondness, not attack) wasn’t capable of explaining herself and diffusing her on-line critics - that was for a good reason.

I laughed hollowly at that, and thought: only someone who has never been on the receiving end of the attentions of an on-line braying mob would think anyone has any hope of “explaining themselves”. That is just not how braying mobs operate.

It was at this juncture that I decided to find out what, exactly, had happened here, first by establishing exactly who “Glennon” was (with some Google prompting, I remembered the fuss around Untamed), then by trying to work out exactly which contemporary act of heresy she’d committed. Whom she’d been perceived as offending, which turn of phrase had landed badly (as in: hate crime badly), or which among her ancient Tweets had been unearthed, declared problematic, then inadequately apologised for.

Which was when I realised this woman had done nothing. Nothing at all. Apart from - you know - the whole unfortunate being very successful thing.

Because her detractors were extremely keen not just to not be considered jealous by others, but also (more importantly), to not have to confront the possibility of their own jealousy themselves, they constructed some virtuous-seeming conceits for their outpouring of negativity.

Mainly (they said) they’d been worried for the Little Voices on SubStack. Not their own, no no no no! For they were not that selfish! No. It was All The Others, they worried about. All those diamonds in the rough, all the undiscovered brilliance, glimmering away in the darkness, whose cautious, tentative literary light was suddenly being totally outshone by Doyle, who wasn’t even better than them (they were quite sure), she’d just been lucky. They leaned in heavily to the narrative of the sanctity of Smaller Writers, the “common people” (actual quote), all beavering away at Their Voice and Their Craft. Because women who are less successful than you, or (at worst), similarly (un) successful to you, are so much easier to like, than those who accumulate 217,000 subscribers in less than two months.

The final thing I noticed was how incapable all those who’d perpetuated an on-line hit job on Doyle were, of thinking they’d done anything wrong. Writing is a brutal business, they argued; if you can’t take the heat, get off of the SubStack! I marvelled at how, not a single one of them seemed capable of performing that most basic of thought experiments, the one which goes:

“But how would it feel, if I were her?” (This being not just a thought experiment, but also an incredibly useful habit for anyone who hopes to be a writer, to acquire.

It is sort of the whole gig.)

Thought I also know, from being - oh, not in Doyle’s position, not quite. I am nowhere near as successful, and - because the quantity of hate directed at a gal on the grounds of her perceived success, tends to be commensurate with the scale of that success - I haven’t had it as bad… But I’ve still had it. Which means one of the things I know which facilitates it, is a total dehumanising of the person on whom you’re hating. (I once happened to meet one of my myriad online trolls in person. When I asked her why she’d felt so capable to saying things which hurt me, she’d looked genuinely shocked and said: “But you didn’t say you were hurt!” Like I’d needed to post a video of me losing it at 3 in the morning - because, true story, I’d thought people were trying to get into my house to kill me - before she’d accept that her behaviour had been damaging to me.)

The other thing I’d say is, there’s a wild misconception that money and success insulate a person from other people’s loathing. Why would someone as rich and famous as Glennon Doyle care just because several thousand strangers on the internet are having an elevated bitch at her? But money and success don’t protect you against on-line bullying. Eddie bloody Redmayne - that beautiful talented award winning movie star - once asked me why I thought it was the hateful comments cut through the internet, in a way the nice stuff never did, and I said I thought it must be primal. Cave person us responds more strongly to anger than it does, kindness; because anger is a threat. Kindness is just nice. Point is: end of the day, whoever you are, however objectively successful, it’s only ever just you, sitting up late into the night - even though you know you shouldn't, you should let it go, but you can’t help it, your laptop or twitter feed or SubStack app or whatever medium it is, through which the hate of others flows like lava, keeps calling you back so you can self-harm on it, one more time… So you look. And you flinch. And you feel sick. And you marvel over how the most poisonous, self sabotaging aspects of your own psychology can be out done by strangers on the internet. And your awards and your money and your hundreds of thousands of subscribers are absolutely no protection, none at all.

Oh, I’ve got a third thing to say, too! I think that, when lots of people become involved in an internet pile-on, on one person who’s perceived as being Bigger than they are individually - the people in the pile-on have a kind of David versus Goliath mentality going on. They are David, right? Small but ferocious, determined and righteous!

Yeah. No.

The pile-on makes you Goliath, love. Massive and mean. You are not the good people you’re mistaking yourselves for.

Anyway.

All of this leaves me with a question.

Given that the vast majority of the voices raised against Glennon Doyle were female, just as the vast majority of voices raises against me were, I always say “95% of my trolls are other women” - do we actually want other women to succeed?

Oh, I know we say we do! All the time! I know we go on and on about women empowering other women, about supporting our sisters in living their best, fullest, most optimal lives, about their being a special place in hell yadda ya…

But do we actually mean it? Because we just saw a woman half-crushed for absolutely no reason other than she was really, really, really successful… So, you know. Do we?

Though perhaps I am being too harsh, here? I mean, in some ways, I’m not. What happened to Doyle was spectacularly harsh, it did no one any favours, and it deserves a little harshness in return, a little: “wanna have a look in the mirror, loves?”

But my esteemed former colleague, the great

Kate Spicer

did just make a decent point to me, concerning all this. “As a journalist” she said “you spend your whole time being rejected, so perhaps we are better at dealing with other people’s gains which feel like our losses.” I have indeed had nearly 30 years experience of watching other women journalists do “better” than me - get jobs I thought I deserved, acclaim and awards I thought I deserved, get paid more, sell more books, and so forth. I have also had nearly 30 years experience of other women journalists watching me, and thinking all those things about my work. I have absolutely found some peace with it. I’ve learned that success as a writer is a product of luck, hustle, timing, some ability, sure, but (above all) a lot of work (really, sitting around waiting for the muse to strike is Not It).

Most of all, I’ve learned that another writer’s success, is absolutely no barrier to you being good. Better, as a writer, than you were yesterday. Better, again, tomorrow. That really is the point.

Although success is nice - which is why I have more good news for you! Another writer being really successful, is absolutely no barrier to you being a bit successful. Earning your first fifty quid from writing. Paying some bills with it. Buying a pretty top.

Glennon Doyle is not stopping you from doing that.

Nor am I.

So: do it.